It was nearing eight p.m. when Kyle was just finishing up the ten minute break he called his supper and heading back toward his main workstation. He had just turned the corner before the computer hub when he saw his parents heading his way and attempted to stifle a sigh as they purposefully moved toward him.

“Kyle, can we talk?” his mother greeted him sadly.

“Probably not,” was his mumbled response as he glanced toward the door to the hub impatiently.

“Why did we have to hear this from Charles, instead of you?” she continued with a shake of her head up at where her son already stood a few inches taller than she, herself.

“Cause, I’m a little busy, this week?” was his only given answer, which just caused her to shake her head, eyes cast downwards once more.

Then his father finally spoke up, as his wife was obviously too upset to form much in the way of full sentences right then. “You’ve been ‘busy’ for three straight years, Kyle. You don’t even live in the same part of the ship as us anymore. And now, you were too busy to tell us they’re sending you out onto some unknown planet? We’re your parents, Kyle. Don’t you think we should have some say in this?”

Kyle just shook his head as he tossed another glance toward the nearby door before responding simply, “no.”

His father scoffed, stunned into a moment of silence by that particular response. “No? Just like that? No? How can you say that we don’t have a say in our own son’s life?”

“Because you don’t,” Kyle stated, forcing any emotion out of his voice. “You’re not qualified to have a say, not in this,” he told them with a sad shake of his head.

Though, Kyle had no time to go into any further explanation, as his mother gasped at his words and moved to slap him hard across the face, before tearfully dragging his father away with her, neither of them able to muster any more words for their son, right then.

A moment later, Kyle looked up again from painfully rubbing the side of his jaw, only to see that Ian had appeared in the last few moments, looking a bit thrown, himself, as he looked off after where Kyle’s parents moved away in obvious upset.

“Um…” Ian attempted as he looked back over at Kyle once more. “Do you want me to uh…” another glance after the younger boy’s parents, “do something?” Ian offered, not quite sure exactly what to say, himself, right then.

“Don’t bother,” was Kyle’s nearly whispered response as he squared his shoulders and turned away to head back toward the door to the computer hub once more.

As Kyle disappeared behind the door once again, Ian let out the breath he had seemed to be holding and glanced after Kyle’s parents once more with another ragged sigh, before making himself continue on his way once again.

Working shorter shifts that week, Ian was actually just finishing up his rounds for the evening when he had run across Kyle and his parents earlier. It was about half an hour afterwards when he was making his way through yet another of his regular workouts there in the ship’s gym.

“How much longer you planning on going, tonight?” Charles’ voice interrupted once he appeared at the door behind where Ian was continuing his weight training.

Not breaking his momentum, Ian only glanced at the older man’s arrival from the corner of his eyes, “As long as I can,” was his simple answer through measured breaths as he continued his workout.

Charles just allowed a slight chuckle, which didn’t actually sound all that jolly, “The point in giving you shorter shifts this week is so you wouldn’t be as stressed going into this.”

“Why would I be stressed?” Ian responded simply, continuing to pull the weighted arms of the machine to meet in front of him before allowing them to return to his side, only to repeat the motion in the next moment.

“You actually trying to tell me you’re not?” Charles asked with a raised brow as he moved the slightest bit closer.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” was Ian’s only response, continuing to stare straight ahead as he spoke.

“Odd, I always thought it was easier to handle something when you had any clue what it was you were about to face,” he told him pointedly.

“Well, who says life is supposed to be ‘easy’?” was Ian’s brief response, quieter though it was spoken than the last.

“Ian, you only have a little over five days before you’ll be risking your own life, and responsible for three other peoples’ lives too. No one is expecting you to not be afraid. Not even me,” he added more gently as he tried to establish some kind of eye contact with the boy he had raised as his own, though it had hardly been a conventional upbringing, in any way.

Ian finally let out a long sigh as he allowed the arms of the machine to finally fall back into their rightful place before silently reaching for a nearby towel to wipe a bit of sweat away from his brow, arms and chest.

After another moment, the younger man finally spoke up, “And what good is me being afraid gonna do any of us, really?”

Charles just shook his head as he began to realize exactly what effect the way he had chosen to raise the man who now sat before him had had. He had succeeded at making him into a soldier, that much was obvious. However, Ian would have to be much more than that when it came to making it through the situation that Charles had been greatly responsible for placing these four young people into now.

Charles sighed slightly as he tried to find the right words then, “Ian, I know you think you’re just meant to be a good soldier, and I’m sure that most of that was put in your head by me,” another small breath, “But just remember, when you’re out there, you can’t only be that. It’ll take a lot more than that to make the right decisions to keep all of you alive. Please always try to remember that,” he added in a near whisper as he moved to place his hand gently over Ian’s shoulder with a slight squeeze before silently leaving the room once more.

As the hour grew later, Jared had to take a break from force-feeding his already reeling brain every medical document or study that the ship’s computers would allow him access to. He pushed away the keyboard with a sigh and he rubbed at his eyes.

Upon opening those deep pools of hazel again, he noted the time with yet another sigh and finally came to the decision that his newly assigned studies could wait until he made at least one more attempt at making sense of his own apparent mental abilities. On that thought, he pushed himself up from the desk in the corner of his own quarters and took another breath before heading through the door.

Several minutes later, he arrived at a wing known as the commons. This area of the ship was basically like a much larger scale version of the crew’s quarters, where his own cabin was. And of course, there was slightly less security here, the doors only requiring an ID code to get through, rather than all the hoops he had to jump through just to get to his own work area or living quarters each day.

Jared moved down several connecting halls nodding to this person or that politely as he made his way to the cabin he was looking for at last. He took a deep breath as he waited outside the door a moment before finally buzzing in his visitor request at the small panel that graced each door of the commons.

There was a lengthy pause before the door finally slid open to allow him entry. Inside, his father looked up at his arrival with more than a bit of wariness rather than any other kind of emotion upon receiving a visit from his son.

“Hey, dad,” Jared attempted a smile as he stepped inside.

“Jared,” his father returned as more a question than a greeting.

“Haven’t seen you in a couple weeks,” Jared attempted as he took an awkward seat at the counter that created the border between the tiny kitchen and the living area of the cabin.

“Well, that’s the beauty of early retirement. I can operate on my own hours, instead of anyone else’s, now,” was his father’s simple response as he focused most of his attention on the book in front of him, rather than his son.

“Oh, so we’ve just been missing each other, I guess,” Jared returned, though the waver in his voice belied the idea that he believed his own words.

“Guess so,” his father returned quietly as he flipped the page.

Jared just nodded as he bit a lip with a nervous glance around his father’s reasonably new living area, then couldn’t help having to add, “Good, was beginning to worry that you were, like, avoiding me or something,” he attempted to sound like he wasn’t all that serious as he proposed the idea, but his emotions easily peered through his voice.

His father just scoffed at the statement before returning, “I opened the door, didn’t I?”

Jared just shook his head at that, “And you seem so happy to see me, too,” he couldn’t help adding.

Then his father sighed in what almost sounded like annoyance, “Did you just come here to try and pick a fight or something, Jared?”

Jared let out a scoff of disbelief before responding, “Hardly. But I can’t help it. You don’t seem very happy to see me, at all. You haven’t in a long time,” he added more quietly, “I was even starting to think you quit working in the lab, just to get away from me. I came here to hopefully find out that that wasn’t really the case.”

“I’ve never said anything resembling that, Jared,” was his father’s only partial denial of the accusation.

“You never said anything, at all, dad. You just up and cut me off. I mean, you weren’t really there all that much in the beginning, but at least you pretended, for a while. Then I got older, and you just couldn’t seem to get away from me fast enough,” Jared stated with breaking voice, all of the feelings he had been holding inside, wanting desperately to get out at that moment.

His father just shook his head silently at the accusation before finding some response, “I don’t know where you’re getting this, Jared. I mean, I got you the job in the lab there with me, didn’t I?” he offered with a shrug.

“Yeah, and as soon as you did, you ran the other direction. I mean you’re barely forty-five, and you decide to retire from your spot as one of the leading scientists we had left? Who does that? Is it any wonder that I think it was because of me just trying to share the part of your life that…that you actually seemed to care about.”

His father, Karl, just shook his head once more, continuing to avoid any eye contact, “So, you just came here to share these delusions of yours and try to lay some kind of guilt trip on me?”

Jared just scoffed again, looking down as he rubbed at his brow, “No, I came here cause I thought you might know things about me that would make my life start to make even the slightest bit of sense again, and that maybe, you’d finally be willing to share those things with me, while you still could,” he had to add, “But I’m thinking, now, that even if you did know how to make this stuff make sense to me, that you probably just couldn’t even be bothered, could you?” he added with a hopeless shrug before moving to leave the room once more, feeling even more lost now than he had felt going into that room in the first place, even.

It was the morning of their last full day aboard the ship before it would be close enough for them to finally make their attempt at changing history, in one way or another. Early that morning, the four of them each received messages directing them to go to the medical wing in order to have their pre-mission physicals.

The four arrived outside Dr. Hamil’s office within a few minutes of one another, where his assistant told them to simply take seats, as if they weren’t all already nervous enough that day.

None of them seemed to have much at all to say as their wait began, as it was too noisy inside all of their heads right then. It wasn’t until Hamil poked his head out and gestured for Jared to come inside first, that any of them even looked up from the blank stares they had all been wearing that morning.

As the door closed behind Jared, who was wearing his usual worried look, Kyle let out a small sigh and shook his head.

“Yes?” Ian was the first to ask, though both he and Lili, who were seated on either side of Kyle, were both jarred from their previous silence by Kyle’s slight sigh.

“She’s gonna kill it,” Kyle stated distraughtly, seeming to have started that conversation without them, inside his own head, where he spent so much of his time, anyway.

“Somethin’s gettin killed?” Ian had to ask with a raised brow.

“Serena, she’ll kill it. I know she will. She’s just that big of a bitch,” Kyle muttered under his breath.

“I thought she was taking care of your computer for ya, not your puppy,” Ian had to retort smartly, causing Lili to have to hide her own slightly amused grin behind a more befitting scowl of disapproval at Ian being less than sympathetic to Kyle’s apparent worries.

“Please, it’s not just a computer. It’s the ship’s entire brain! And it’ll be in the hands of hers!” Kyle argued in all seriousness.

“Her brain has hands now, too?” Ian couldn’t help another jibe, which did almost receive a smile from Lili, almost.

“Oh, fuck off, Ian. This is important shit I’m talking about here!”

“Hence the fucking and the shitting, I guess,” Ian returned in his continued glib manner, finding it just as easy to push Kyle‘s buttons as Kyle had found it to push his a week earlier.

Lili tried to swallow any amusement at their interaction to attempt to comfort Kyle, “What is it that’s got you so worried? I thought you said that Serena is super-intelligent. She should know how to keep things running smoothly enough while we’re gone, shouldn’t she?” Lili told him with some combination of hoping as well as asking for her own reassurances at the same time.

Kyle shook his head again, “I’m not worried about her being intelligent enough to run it, I’m worried about her getting bored and deciding to feed it a pet virus or something, just to see what happens,” he complained.

Lili looked a little startled by the idea, but attempted to write it off as exaggeration brought on by Kyle’s nerves, “Do you really think she would risk her big chance at proving herself by doing something like that? Come on. She’s supposed to be intelligent, right?”

“Wow, he’s just like a new mommy fretting over leavin her brat with a sitter for the first time ever,” Ian had to interject with a smirk, “At least I can’t accuse you of never providing any amusement, Kyle,” he told him with a condescending pat on the younger man’s back, which caused Kyle to simply scoff once again.

The conversation didn’t go on much longer though, as Hamil then emerged from the exam room to return to his assistant’s desk, handing her the results from Jared’s physical, while Jared apparently still waited inside the other room, “Go ahead and file that, and then send me their forms to sign off on when he gets done with them,” he instructed the young woman as he began removing his own lab coat in preparation to go off in search of his morning’s breakfast.

“Wait, when who’s done with us?” Lili spoke up as Hamil started toward the door.

“Jared, he’s finishing up the physicals for you three.”

“Pardon me?” she stammered, hoping that the others couldn’t see the blush she could feel rise to her cheeks at that particular moment.

“No need to worry Lili, he’s gotta get at least some hands on experience before you guys get down there,” he then leaned in to speak more furtively, “Besides, this kid seems to know even more than me, as hard as it is for me to admit that, myself,” he told her with a slight wink and a pat on the shoulder before heading from the room at last.

“Um, I guess you’re next, Ian,” Jared interjected with a deep breath as he poked his head back out of the exam room he had somehow inherited in the last ten minutes.

Ian raised a brow as he stood, not able to keep from making one last comment that somehow seemed to be directed at Lili, this time, “Hope he doesn’t have cold hands,” with that he moved to follow Jared into the other room as well.

Lili just shook her head, not wanting to try and decipher any hidden meanings in Ian’s comment right then, and instead turned back to Kyle, who, despite his earlier mood, seemed to find Ian’s last allusion somehow amusing, himself.

“Jared’s giving us our physicals?” she asked Kyle in an ever so slightly accusatory manner.

“Seems like,” Kyle shrugged as he checked his LU again, just in case he had missed anything in the last five seconds.

“Jared?” she repeated pointedly.

Kyle simply smirked again as he moved through his recent messages.

“And you seem to be finding it quite amusing, somehow.”

Kyle just shook his head, “What’s the big, Lili?” was his only response.

“Well, maybe it’s not quite as weird for you two, but it’s just a little weird for me!” she insisted.

Kyle scoffed, “You’ve had a male doctor all your life, Lil. I believe he’s having a bagel right now,” Kyle returned smartly.

“Yeah, but that’s Hamil, he’s like, a doctor,” were the only words she could find.

“I don’t get you, Lili. You knew Jared was gonna be our doctor when we went on this trip. Why the flaking out about it, now?”

“Yeah, I thought that maybe he’d have to bandage my ankle if I twisted it or something, or maybe, possibly give me CPR if I fell in some water, but…I wasn’t really planning on…” she just shook her head.

Kyle couldn’t help looking over at her with further amusement, “Oh come on,” he scoffed.

Lili narrowed her eyes back at him, “Come on, what?”

“You can drop the act, Lil. As long as you both still do your jobs down there. That’s all I care about, now.”

“Drop what act?” she asked slowly, obviously confused by that comment.

“Come on, the night we found out we were all going?” Kyle nudged.

“What about it?” she asked with further confusion.

“Come on, me and Ian both saw the logs.”

“What logs?”

“The visitor’s log…for your cabin…any of this sound familiar?”

“What are you even talking about, Kyle?” she asked with another shake of her long locks.

Kyle let out a chuckle before speaking furtively, “Please, I thought you already kinda liked playin doctor with Jared.”

“Wh--what?” she exclaimed.

“Come on, we’ve been stuck on this ship together all our lives. You’re both hot, young, bored. And he’s got that ‘oh I’m so shy no girl would ever think I had unsavory intentions’ thing goin for him. I mean, I’m surprised he hasn’t used that to get to every other girl on the ship. Maybe he actually likes ya. I mean, he’s a nice enough guy. You could do worse.”

“So…” she took a breath to compose herself, “you’re basing all of this on the fact that Jared happened to be in my cabin for a few hours one night?”

Kyle just looked back down at the screen with a shrug, “I mean, it’s not like you ever seemed to notice any other guys, right?” he told her quietly as he bit his lip and silently went about moving through his computer screens once again.